


Letters Unedited

by Raaj



Category: Bravely Default (Video Game) & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Fluff, but with a little bit of knottiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 02:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16672693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raaj/pseuds/Raaj
Summary: After Tiz woke up, Edea gave him a bundle of letters tied together with pink ribbon and told him they were love letters from Agnès.But seeing how Agnès reacts when he brings them up, he wonders if perhaps Edea got it wrong.





	Letters Unedited

“You wanted to show me something, Tiz?” Agnès asked.  
  
Tiz smiled, holding up a bundle of envelopes. Agnès’ reaction was delayed–he put it down to the distorted view through the pendant–but then she gave a sharp “oh!”, recognizing it just as he’d expected her to. “Edea gave me these. She told me that you wrote them while I was…well, sleeping.” He ducked his head, feeling his cheeks heat for that stumble over his words. He hadn’t meant to bring his coma back up.  
  
“I…did, yes,” Agnès said. Tiz fidgeted with the ribbon tying the envelopes together.  
  
“I wanted to read them with you, but… would you not like that?” Tiz asked. He couldn’t help thinking Agnès looked uneasy, and that unsettled him, because he’d been so sure this would please her–fluster her a little, perhaps, but he’d thought she’d find it nice all the same. “It’s too much?”  
  
“Too much what?”  
  
Tiz bit the inside of his cheek. Too sentimental, too  _romantic_. He couldn’t say that now, feeling certain he’d read the situation all wrong. The pink ribbon was simply a flourish from Edea to keep them together, he was suddenly sure; the knot was more her handiwork than Agnès’, and she said she always had scraps from sewing projects lying around. And Edea had always been trying to push them together, he knew that, and if she’d made it sound like they were  _love_ letters, well, more fool him for not remembering that about Edea. Or remembering and still wanting to believe it anyway. “But you did write these to me, didn’t you?” he asked, and now his tone was desperate enough for him to wince. Hopefully the pendant wouldn’t pick that up. He hoped he hadn’t gotten  _that_  wrong, too. “I can read them by myself?”  
  
Even if they had been written as letters to a friend, he wanted to read them…they were from Agnès.  
  
“I, ah…I would prefer you didn’t, actually,” Agnès said, and he felt his stomach sink. “They are indeed for you, but I’d like you to wait until I might have the opportunity to look them over. I–I’d forgotten about them before now.”  
  
“Oh,” Tiz said stupidly, because he’d been left at rock bottom without a clue. She’d  _forgotten_  she’d written these, yet she was concerned about what she had written in them? And Edea had been hinting like a child for birthday gifts that she personally thought they were romantic. What could explain–except that maybe some of these had been romantic, Agnès had held feelings for him, but now they were gone. Now they were embarrassing. He’d been asleep too long, and she’d already moved on, before he’d even realized there was a chance. “Oh, all right. I could…I mean, I don’t need to read them if it might bother you. I could get rid of them now.”  
  
He really would rather get rid of them now, if she didn’t want him reading them. Because otherwise the temptation was going to be too great.  
  
“Maybe that would be best,” she agreed. “It’s…a bit shameful…”  
  
Oh, not just embarrassing. _Shameful_. It was a good thing campfires could always use more tinder, and Tiz stumbled to his feet to feed the letters to the flames.  
  
“…I was upset, but it’s still unacceptable.”  
  
The thought of Agnès being upset distracted Tiz from his own emotional turmoil. He went over her words again, and…Agnès tended to be careful with those. She wouldn’t say ‘shameful’ unless she meant it, and he had a difficult time imagining her making such an impassioned declaration of love that she would find it 'shameful’ and not simply an embarrassment. “Agnès, what did you write?”  
  
“…The first few letters should be just fine,” Agnès said. She carded her fingers through her long hair in a brief, nervous gesture. “But eventually, I wasn’t so sure if you would read all the letters, or–or any of them, actually, so I became used to composing them less carefully. Venting to you through them, I suppose. And then I got angry at that, that I wasn’t sure you would read any of them, or–or wake up at all–and I let that get into the letters, too. Sometimes I was angry at myself, because I thought …maybe your condition was because you helped me on my journey. Other times, I was angry at–I was angry at you.” It took her two tries to say it, but she said it clearly the second time, her eyes closing. “Because despite knowing you would collapse, you did not tell us sooner.”  
  
Right. He’d left letters for them too, hadn’t he? With… an innkeep. The name escaped him right now. It wasn’t important anyway. “You chewed me out in some of these, huh?” He thumbed the edges of the envelopes. So, not love letters after all. In fact, it sounded like Edea couldn’t have been further off.  
  
Though Agnès had kept writing, even when she was upset with him.  
  
“You could say I did,” Agnès admitted, glancing to the side. “I gave the bad letters to Edea too, because… at the time, I was just so upset, and I wanted you to know. I thought–you deserved that.”  
  
“Don’t I?”  
  
“No!” Agnès shook her head sharply. “I wish you had told me–told us sooner you were ill, but I know you hardly chose to be! You were asleep for so long, and…I’m so happy you’re awake, I don’t want to dwell on any of that any longer!”  
  
“I don’t want to dwell on it either,” Tiz said, “but I actually want to read these even more now. If you were upset, I want to know. I want to make it up to you. That way we can go forward.”  
  
“You being alive is enough for me.”  
  
“Well, I guess it’s more for my own conscience then,” Tiz said. He could do a little better than just  _being alive_ , he hoped, and Agnès deserved a proper apology. “Besides, it’s not all bad, right? I counted fourteen letters in here. You weren’t mad at me every time, right?”  
  
“No…it’s not…all bad,” Agnès said slowly, and Tiz felt his heart skip a beat when she had to duck her head, looking up at him through her eyelashes. Now she was bashful…so…had Edea actually been right? About at least one of the letters? No, no. No good counting letters before their envelopes were hatched–unsealed.  
  
“Is it all right, then?” he asked again.  
  
Agnès giggled a little, relaxing. “I might ask you to skim sometimes… but if you’re sure, of course it’s all right.”


End file.
